I have switched this blog's commenting system from a basic open source plug-in to Disqus. I feel ambivalent for outsourcing my data to third party services. But hosting my own comment system takes maintenance. Disqus also has nicer UI and more features like email notification. Let's hope the Disqus service will remain available for a long time.

Installing its javascript to the web page is fairly simple. Importing old comment is lot more difficult. The documentation is minimal. I have to resort to many rounds of trial and error. It takes me several hours to import all comment, even through there are actually not too many of them.

Incidentally while I'm working in the Disqus integration, Facebook has rolled out their own commenting web services. Facebook is becoming the new Microsoft. I'll rather support competitions.

2011.03.05 comments